Shutting Off the Dissent Channel
Bird, Kai
Shutting Off the Dissent Channel By Kai Bird The State Department sent F. Allen "Tex" Harris to Argentina in 1977 to report on human rights in that country. Harris's dispatches on physical...
...It is possible that the decline in the use of the dissent channel . . . represents the success of the system . . . rather than a deliberate effort to squelch different views," says Alfred Atherton, until recently the director general of the Foreign Service...
...But the totals have dropped sharply under President Reagan...
...John Reinerston, a foreign service officer who attributes the lack of dissent to past instances of retribution, has written that the channel is "one important index of individual political integrity within the Foreign Service...
...So Harris turned to the State Department's "dissent channel" and continued to send reports of his grisly findings to Washington...
...Supporters of the administration argue that disuse of the system reflects increasing harmony within the Foreign Service...
...Foreign service officers have a reputation for timidity when it comes to advancing new ideas, which by the very fact of being new, risk being labeled "unsound!' For the bold ones, the dissent channel provides a potential opportunity to grab top officials by their pin-striped lapels and give them the straight dope...
...Still, Tex Harris is not the only foreign service officer to use the channel and then suffer a reprimand or demotion...
...Other career diplomats dismiss the fuss over the channel as irrelevant...
...After filing a cable in 1974 protesting Kissinger's interventionist policy in Cyprus, Thomas Boyatt was removed from his position as director of the Office of Cypriot Affairs...
...If you feel strongly enough about an issue, you go to your ambassador and you do what you must to get things changed ." Others, such as the members of the Sages' Group, are less sanguine about the situation...
...The result has been that our foreign policy has suffered for lack of thorough debate and knowledgeable challenge...
...They attribute the atrophy of the dissent channel to a fear of retribution and the Reagan administration's pointed hostility toward those who question the White House line...
...Harris's dispatches on physical abuse, kidnapping, and murder by military death squads enraged the Argentine government...
...Sadly, it now looks like the dissent channel may be closing down altogether...
...As secretary of state, Henry Kissinger seemed to confirm the view that the channel was intended primarily as a means for FSOs to blow off steam rather than challenge policy...
...When senior officers are reluctant to forward the results of honest reporting by their subordinates because it contains politically unwelcome revelations or opinions with which they disagree, the dissent channel offers a means of reaching the decision-makers...
...Active and retired foreign service officers concerned about the lack of policy debate within the State Department last year formed an organization called the Sages' Group and released a statement charging that the channel is "merely a management tool for letting the system vent bottled-up pressures . . .without affording these dissenting voices a real impact on policy...
...only six formal dissents were filed last year...
...Last year he finally received a promotion, but only after he was honored by the American Foreign Service Association for his "bureaucratic courage to stand up for what was right...
...Harris's experience illustrates the importance of the dissent channel, an official program established in 1971 to facilitate the flow of controversial views from embassy staffs to Foggy Bottom...
...Instead, conformity is rewarded and all but the most aggressive officers are discouraged from thinking that they can influence policy with their reporting...
...The New York Times suggested at the time that the department wanted to curb disclosures to the press...
...Cables filed through the dissent channel have rarely changed policy...
...After persisting in reporting Argentine military abuses, Harris received extremely poor efficiency ratings and was passed over for promotions...
...The State Department opened the dissent channel amid a flurry of leaks indicating internal turmoil over President Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia and support the Pakistani government in its brutal attempt to suppress unrest in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh...
...In 1979, Warren Christopher, then deputy secretary of state, sent a memorandum to all State Department employees, saying, "Two cases have come to my attention in which superiors actively discouraged personnel from using the dissent channel or penalized employees for having done so...
...The dissent channel is a crock," says one foreign service officer working in the Far East bureau...
...It's a sound idea because for every policy adopted regarding the Middle East, Central America, or the Soviet Union, there is an alternative, equally coherent view that could be expressed but isn't...
...In 1973 Kissinger acknowledged the importance of dissenting views but stressed, "We cannot operate the government or the department if dissent is taken to the press...
...In 1977, Arthur Purcell received unusually low performance ratings as a result of filing controversial reports on labor disputes in Australia...
...The foreign service officer's work also angered his boss, Ambassador Raul Castro...
...By that index, we are failing badly...
...No public reprimand of the unnamed superiors followed...
...One hundred twenty-three dissents have been filed through the channel since its inception, with a record 28 in 1977 under the Carter administration...
...In a recent interview, Reinerston said that under Reagan "alternative ideas are less welcome," and "fear of expressing them is fairly pervasive!' In addition to providing foreign service officers with an emblem of their professionalism and a means to follow their conscience, the dissent channel theoretically permits knowledgeable diplomats in the field to advise decision-makers when policies made in Washington are inconsistent with the realities on the ground...
...The dissent channel may never have been taken too seriously on the seventh floor of the State Department...
...Kai Bird, who writes on foreign policy for The Nation, was a 1984 fellow with the Alicia Patterson Foundation...
...But today, the dissent channel is dying, and Tex Harris's story provides at least one explanation why: sending home bad news can cripple your career...
...These critics point out, for example, the purging of officers who disagreed with Reagan's policies in Central America and the transfer of China specialists prominent under the Carter administration to posts outside their area of expertise because the president feared they would not implement his pro-Taiwanese tilt on China policy...
Vol. 17 • April 1985 • No. 3
